A Hit Drama in Germany, 'Babylon Berlin' Crosses the Atlantic

Hitler’s

name is only mentioned once during the German-language show’s first season, and then only when he is referred to as a joke candidate. In the German federal election of 1928, Nazis won a mere 2.6% of the vote. Five years later, they took 44%.

Based on novels by the German crime writer

Volker Kutscher,

“Babylon Berlin” cost about $40 million, making it one of the most expensive German TV series ever made, according to a spokeswoman for Beta Film, which sold the series in 60 countries. It is also the first German co-production between a public broadcaster, ARD, and a private one, Sky, she said.

Co-written and co-directed by Mr. Tykwer and fellow German filmmakers

Henk Handloegten

and

Achim von Borries,

the show required 180 days of shooting, nearly 300 locations, 5,000 extras and features a jazzy soundtrack from

Bryan Ferry.

It stars 37-year-old

Volker Bruch

—one of the leads in the Emmy-winning “Generation War”—as Gereon Rath, a haunted, self-medicating police commissioner from Cologne who is transferred to the vice squad in Berlin, a city he knows little about.

“From the first day the city swallows him up in a big breath,” says producer

Stefan Arndt,

who helped develop the show. “Cologne is old-fashioned, while in Berlin there’s sex, drugs and women with short hair.”

One of these women is

Charlotte Ritter

(Liv Lisa Fries) who supports her impoverished family by working as an archivist for the police by day and a prostitute by night. Her dream is to become the first woman to be employed as a detective in the all-male Berlin police force.

“By 1929, new opportunities were arising,” says Mr. Tykwer, whose fast-paced direction is reminiscent of his 1998 breakout film “Run Lola Run.” “Women had more possibilities to take part in society, especially in the labor market as Berlin became crowded with new thinking, new art, theater, music and journalistic writing.”

Nonetheless Mr. Tykwer says that he and his co-directors were determined not to idealize those days. “People tend to forget that it was also a very rough era in German history,” the 52-year-old director says. “There was a lot of poverty, and people who had survived the war were suffering from a great deal of trauma.”

Mr. Rath’s first case when he arrives in Berlin is to bust a pornography ring whose members have been covertly filming prominent public figures having sex with prostitutes. The show also examines police brutality toward communists in the Weimar Republic and the stealthy, post-World War I buildup of a secret army that is far greater than the one permitted by the Treaty of Versailles.

“From an historical perspective the series is very acute in showing how Weimar democracy was under attack both from the communist left, as well as by traditional conservatives, in a kind of unholy alliance,” says

Thomas Weber,

a German historian not involved with the show but whose 2010 book “Hitler’s First War” is in development as a TV series.

By the end of season two of “Babylon Berlin,” which has already aired in Germany, the Nazi Party is beginning to make its xenophobic presence felt, as citizens grow disillusioned with the Weimar Republic—a period mirrored in Germany today with the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party, he adds.

On Netflix, the two eight-episode seasons of “Babylon Berlin” are joining other foreign-language shows available to U.S. subscribers, including France’s “The Frozen Dead,” South Korea’s “Black” and Spain’s “La Casa de Papel.”

Mr. Handloegten says that the show’s third season, currently being written, will encompass the 1929 stock market crash, which was devastating to Germany’s working class.

“One of the main reasons to make ‘Babylon Berlin’ was to show how all these Nazis did not just fall from the sky,” he says. “They were human beings who reacted to German society’s changes and made their decisions accordingly.”

Write to Tobias Grey at wsje.weekend@wsj.com